Let's count Newegg customer reviews of current SSDs - Who will help?

wouldn't be the first time, that's the worst thing of all. so it's not just conspiracy.com, but based on facts, actually. which imho is scary.

 

I still see all of the reviews, be sure to clear any filter options.

Worst case, disable javascript on the whole page and see if anything changes.

 

Like I reported one page back, the reviews became visible again.

 

Vertex 3 240GB have 4 failures out of 13 reviews now. 3 failures the last week...

Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

Vertex 3 120GB:
9/51 giving it a bad review
2 failures the last week
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Vertex 3 240GB:
6/17 giving it a bad review
1 failure the last week
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Vertex 3 120GB IOPS:
6/16 giving it a bad review
5 (!!!) failures the last week
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 Series – MAX IOPS Edition VTX3MI-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

Some of the negative reviews are by people that complain about the random speeds in benchmarks, not very interesting in my opinion.

I'm more interested in the overall amount of failures. Did you count that too?

Thanks for your work.

Edit:
Intel 510 120GB 5 failures in 55 reviews = 9% failures.
Vertex 3 120GB 4 failures in 51 reviews = 8% failures.

I think 50 reviews is a good number to start counting failures. Who will count the 240GB Vertex 3 and Intel 510?

 

Yeah you are right. Many of the bad reviews of the 120GB are from people whining about the speeds. There are 5 failures with Vertex 3 120GB though.

The intel 510 120 GB have 3 failures, not 4. The Macbook compability have nothing to do with with the drive itself. Atleast it is not a failure. And there is another one of those 3 complaining about that it does not work on Macbook. Which means that that it could have only 2 failures.

Vertex 3 120GB
10% failures

Intel 510 120GB
5% failures (3) 4% failures (2)

 

I recounted, 5 failures with the Vertex 3 is correct.

But wait a minute... an OCZ drive not working in a Lenovo is a failure and an Intel drive not working in a Macbook is not a failure?

As defined in the first post, a drive not working is a failure. We didn't make exceptions for Macbooks then, I wouldn't start making them now. Intel is responsible for making the SSDs and the chipsets in the Macbooks. When it doesn't work they deserve negative rep for it.

So both Vertex 3 and Intel 510 have 5 failures so far.

 

incompatability is a failure unless Mac can only take very specific SSD/HDD.

 

Let me quote to you and see if you can see the difference
Vertex 3 review:
"I installed the Vertex 3 in a brand new Thinkpad T520. It would often freeze for 30-60 seconds at a time. It makes the drive unusable. All the drivers are up to date."

Intel 510 review:
" Currently it doesn't seem to be supported by OSX, which pretty much limits my MacBook to a paper weight for now."
You see the difference?

And no, the Intel 510 have 3 or 4 failures. 3 if a we should count failure as something that is BSODs, freezes, dead, something that is wrong with the components on the drive. Do you see any other reviews there that complain about it not working on a non Apple device? No? And because the chipset does not work with Intel 510 doesn`t mean that the SSD have failed. But since you have counted incompability as failure before fair enough.

Vertex 3 120GB
51 reviews
6 failures (there is another failure giving it 4/5)
12% failures
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706&cm_re=vertex_3-_-20-227-706-_-Product

Vertex 3 IOPS 120GB
18 reviews
7 failures
39% failure
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 Series – MAX IOPS Edition VTX3MI-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Vertex 3 240GB
21 reviews
7 failures
33% failure
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Intel 510 120GB
55 reviews
5 failures
9% failure
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167042&cm_re=intel_510-_-20-167-042-_-Product

Intel 510 250GB
14 reviews
3 failures (1 with compability problems with Macbook)
21% failures
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167043&cm_re=intel_510-_-20-167-043-_-Product

 

I see two people with non functioning SSDs in their laptop. Some people with Intel 510 had it work for a while and then it failed like here: 'it worked for a day when installing etc. now it will not even boot.'

When I count I see Intel 510 120GB has 5 failures. 1 of the failures is listed under 3 star reviews:
"the second drive I got refused to cooperate, would disappear from disk utilities, refuse to be formatted etc."

Looking at these failure rates it looks like the Intel 510 is Intel's least reliable drive so far. This is useful information for people trying to decide between Crucial M4 and Intel 510. M4 doesn't have enough reviews yet though.

 

I counted that one, but didn`t see that one on page 6. You are right. 5 failures

What i meant about the two quotes was that the Vertex review had freezes while the Intel review said that it is not supported by OSX.

Freezes/dead/BSOD does not equal not supported by an OS. Two very different things imo. And i agree that the "it worked for a day when installing etc. now it will not even boot" should be counted as a fail which i did

 

As far as I know the guy claiming that the Intel 510 is not supported by OS X was just stating his experience. It's not correct because there are people using it with OS X without any problems.

I haven't digged into the issue but as far as I know there's a firmware problem that needs to be addressed.

If the Intel 510 was not compatible with OS X and Intel would have stated that upfront it would have been a different story. I agree on that.

 

The problem with this system of rating good vs. bad reviews, is that people are more apt to comment when something goes wrong then when something goes right.

Also a factor you cannot predict is the total number of orders. As you increase the number of orders, you increase the chance that bad units will occur in the total population. Combine that with my previous point, and the most popular units are going to be the ones with the most instances of reported failures, making it appear that they are 'bad' when they are no worse than other products with lower total sales volume.

 

To clarify: we're not rating good vs. bad reviews, we're counting failures. And yes people are more apt to comment when something goes wrong, it's not a problem because that's likely to happen to every brand.

Newegg failure rate is not the real world failure rate. No problem, because the most reliable drives on Newegg are likely to have the lowest real world failure rate.

I don't agree on that one. When there's a small sample in the beginning the failure rates can be too low or too high because of statistical variations, but as the sample gets larger the failure rate will get more accurate.

 

Reviews of all SATA III drives are probably inaccurate because of two current issues.

For Windows laptops the Intel RST drivers seem to cause issues (stuttering, freezing, BSOD).
The new MBP 2011 series seem to have issues with all SATA III SSDs.

Here's a message from Crucial:
"Some users have reported internal compatibility issues between their early 2011 Mac Book Pro systems and Crucial C300 SSDs, while their C300 works if used as an external drive. This is not a specific or unique compatibility issue to our Crucial SSDs; the same issue seems to be affecting other brands of SSDs as well. There has been some speculation as to what the cause of this is, but to date there is no known resolution."

 

I had another look at some SSDs.

Intel 320 isn't looking as good as many would expect. I didn't count but I noticed quite few clear failures in the relatively short time it's been selling. If anyone wants to count that would be interesting.

When Crucial M4 gets a bad review it's nearly always because of the LPM issue. Haven't seen any failures yet but I didn't look very hard.

Update: Counted it. Intel 320 144 reviews, 9 failures. Failure rate: 6%.

 

Then I need to rate my 320 120GB I've been running rock solid for 1.5 months.

And maybe my M4, though I've only had it a week. So far thrilled though.

 

@Phil: I didn`t count the low capacity versions of Intel 320. Did you count all versions?

Vertex 3 120GB:
Vertex 3 120GB Newegg
103 reviews
20 failures
19.4% failure

Vertex 3 240GB:
Vertex 3 240GB Newegg
38 reviews
11 failures
28.9% failures

Intel 510 120GB:
Intel 510 120GB Newegg
91 reviews
9 failures
9.8% failures

Intel 510 250GB:
Intel 510 250GB Newegg
20 reviews
3 failures
15% failures

Crucial M4 128GB:
Crucial M4 128GB Newegg
37 reviews
3 failures (didn`t count the freezes since they are fixed through firmware)
8.1% failures

Crucial M4 256GB:
Crucial M4 256GB Newegg
6 reviews
0 failures
0% failures

Intel 320 40GB:
Part 1 Newegg
Part 2 Newegg
Part 3 Newegg (Sigh)
19 reviews
2 failure (it is the same that have put in 2 bad reviews. Same heading and same date.)
10.5% failures

Intel 320 80GB:
Part 1 Newegg
Part 2 Newegg
14 reviews
0 failures
0% failures


Intel 320 120GB:
Intel 320 120GB Newegg
52 reviews
1 failure
1.9% failure

Intel 320 160GB:
Intel 320 160GB Newegg
30 reviews
1 failure
3.3% failure

Intel 320 300GB:
Part 1 Newegg
Part 2 Newegg
Part 3 Newegg
8 reviews
1 failure
12.5% failure

Intel 320 600GB:
Intel 320 600GB Newegg
10 reviews
0 failures
0% failures

Corsair Force 3 120GB:
Corsair Force 3 120GB Newegg
39 reviews
17 failures
43.6% failures

Kingston V+100 96GB:
Part 1 Newegg
Part 2 Newegg
67 reviews
4 failures
6.0% failures

 

So in summary, complaint rates (and maybe failure rates) for this generation's SSDs are abysmal when compared to the last generation, with the exceptions of the Intel 320 and Vertex 3, which have about the same rates of complaints as their predecessors.

Are people merely being more vocal nowadays? Or are 2011's SSDs truly that bad?

[Edit] @Cloudfire: That should be Corsair Force 3, not Corsair Force in the bolded text

 

Ops sorry. Fixed.

I don`t think the SSDs are this bad. People who complain tend to post a review on Newegg when they are unsatisfied and unhappy. So the failure percentage is inflated, but the point of this data is to see how they compare to each other. I`d imagine the same amount of people buying Intel would post a negative review at Newegg as owners of Corsair. Plus the "failures" could be other than a failure. We are counting BSODs etc, which could be fixed by firmware later. So the failures are a mixture of real failures and problems that people shouldn`t be dealing with.

I`m a bit impressed by the Kingston SSDs. Didn`t think they were this reliable.

 

The percentages have always been inflated, but the part that has me most worried is the double-digit complaint rates against almost all the 2011 SSDs. In contrast, last year's 470, C300, and X25-M all had single-digit complaint rates.

So either every single drive from this generation has serious firmware issues that still need to be worked out as you said, or everyone except Samsung and Kingston have thrown reliability and compatibility testing out the window. Or it could be both of the above

 

complaint != failure. I am only interested to see real problems reported. Say for the 320, I only noticed two cases that can be real concerns. One is the Mac case, the other is the wrong SMART reporting.

 

That is what we have done. BSODs, drive not detected, DOA, failures, crashes etc. Not silly things like "OMG slower than advertised", expensive, didn`t have brackets etc

 

Yes sir. I counted every drive that's listed under Intel 320 on Newegg.com.

According to Intel the 320 line comprises 40GB, 80GB, 160GB, 300GB and 600GB models.
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/320series/overview.htm

By the way, maybe it's time we start making a distinction between real failures and firmware problems.

As far as I could tell Crucial M4 had zero failures and lots of freezing problems. While Intel 320 had several real failures and zero freezing problems.

Iirc I counted four hard failures. Then there were several people that didn't get their drive to work or recognized.

On the first page of this thread is exactly defined how we count.

It seems like Intel 320 is doing worse than Intel G2, especially if you take into account the short time it's been selling.

For one, people experiencing failure are likely to leave feedback sooner.

Second, SATA III SSDs push the limits of systems and drivers more, so will lead to more problems.

Third, 25nm NAND is said to be less reliable than 34nm NAND.

(techreport.com)

 

120GB is also there.

No M4 have several failures. I didn`t count the freezes at all because it is fixed through firmware update.
I disagree that we should discard the firmware problems because that is to me something that a user should not deal with. As far as I know Vertex 3 and Corsair still haven`t fixed their drives and should therefor be counted as a problem drive or "failure".

I will count the rest of the 320 today and see if I get the same result as you. If it is 6% failures, it is still the best out there. But yes, worse than X25-M but still a lot better than the other new gen SSDs.

 

The total failures of Intel 320 SSD is 3.8% and I have updated my counting post. If we exclude the 40GB and 80GB versions we get 2.5%. I`d say this is pretty close to what G2 drives had

I also recounted the M4s and it seems that 2 of the failures I counted was freezes. So now it is in 3rd place

1st place: Intel 320 failure rate: 5.3% failures
2nd place: Kingston V+100 failure rate: 6.0% failures
3rd place: Crucial M4 failure rate: 9.3% failures
4th place: Intel 510 failure rate: 11% failures
5th place: Vertex 3 failure rate: 22% failures
6th place: Corsair Force 3 failure rate: 44% failures

 

For Intel 320 I counted 9 "failures" (as defined in the first post) in 144 reviews. How many did you count?

Ps. this was last week. Reviews are up to 151 now.

I did not say discard. I said make a distinction.

Why would you want to exclude certain models?

Please show me. I can only find one. I mean real failures. Not LPM/firmware problems.

 

I counted 5 failures of the 320. I don`t want to go back and count the M4 and 320 again. And yes we take the Mac problems in consideration as we did for the Intel 510. And how on earth can we judge that the BSODs are because of LPM? That goes for that dinstinction idea of yours as well. We don`t know the exact reason why a drive BSOD or "doesn`t work". No way that we are able to distinguish real failures from firmware problems just from a post at Newegg.

And please stop quoting every part of my posts. It is annoying. Thank you

 

Ok I just counted the Intel 320 again.

151 reviews.
Not recognized: 2
Drive was working fine then bricked: 4
Dead on arrival: 1
Mac. incompatibility:1

8 failures as defined in the first post on 151 reviews. Now 5.3 %.

The reason I counted 9 before was that some reviews are posted double.

Especially the 4 bricked drives in such a short time frame I find quite alarming. I doubt the G2 showed anything like that.

@ cloudfire, I'm used to quoting what I reply to. If you get annoyed by it I will try not do it for you

I will count the M4 in similar style.

 

SIGH. You just don`t give up do you? Fine!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148442&cm_re=crucial_m4-_-20-148-442-_-Product


Post nr 2.

Page 2, post nr 2.

Page 2, post nr 3.

Page 4, post nr 3.

Here is a "maybe" failure
Page 3, last post.

So yeah, 4 failures. Found 1 more so then I have to update my previous count post. And no, I am not going to recount again. Ever!

 

"The drive is not performing" is not a hard failure.

The second, third and fourth are hard failures.

The last sounds like a classic LMP problem.

I'll do the counting for M4 now.

 

Yes it is. He gave it 1 egg, and it is a failure. He have RMA`d them to new M4s twice he says in the post. Yes I agree that the last one could be LPM problem.

 

It's a failure as defined in the first post and it's not a hard failure. It sounds like a firmware problem to me. Anyway, I've done the M4 count.

Crucial M4 99 reviews:
Freezes(LPM/Power management) related bug: 8
Bricked (drive was working fine then crashed): 1
Mac. incompatibility: 2
Unknown issue: 1

Total failures as defined in the first post: 12.

Update Kingston V+ 100.

87 reviews.
Bricked: 5
Not recognized: 1

 

Wait so why don't we count firmware issues as failures? The way I counted was by, if it didn't work out of the box, I counted it as a failure unless they managed to resolve it with such a firmware fix.

 

We still do.

In addition I suggest we make a separation between:

Drive not recognized:
Dead on arrival:
Drive was working fine then crashed:
Mac. incompatibility:
Freezes(LPM/Power management) related bug:
Unknown issue:

The reason is that we get more information that way. For example: The Crucial M4 looks has more than 10% "failures" now. But most of those failures aren't real failures. 8 or 9 of them are LPM/firmware issues. And those failures would have probably been resolved by either applying the new firmware or disabling LPM.

Another example: If I see Intel 320 has 5.3% I'd think it's doing pretty pretty good. But if I see that four people had the drive working fine and then fail suddenly, I get a different, more complete picture. Same goes for Kingston V+ 100, 5 bricked drives in 87 reviews is quite a lot.

I'd like to get this information for every drive.

If you have more suggestions for categories I'd like to hear them.

 

Personally I don't need the seperation. All the ones you have mentioned are real problem to me(and added to the the wrong SMART value causing machine shutdown which is very rare but still a real issue). To me a HDD/SSD that I purchase should be plug and play and functions until I throw it away. Needing firmware upgrade and/or driver upgrade is already a problem to me. I never need to think about these things when buying a HDD.

 

I respect your opinion. And in that case, do not buy SATA III SSDs

Personally I do like the separation, because drives that were working fine and then suddenly quit is a big indicator for unreliability for me.

 

agreed 100%. That is the most frustrating. Occasional lemon(DOA) is unavoidable but happily using one after all the installation and optimization then suddenly dead is garbage bin matter to me.

 

Well the Intel 510 have not needed any firmware updates as far as I know. It doesn`t have problems with freezing or BSODs at all. It is truly a plug and play SSD

 

thanks and good to know. I haven't followed too closely on the new things as I am not planning to buy anything in the near future.

 

I saw two people complain about minute long freezes during boot up with Intel 510. With one of them the drive died later.

Intel 510, 111 reviews:
Disk disappeared: 1
Worked fine then bricked: 6
DOA: 1
Mac. incompatibility issues: 2
60 sec. pause during boot: 1
Unknown issue: 1 (drive failed twice?)

12 failures in 111 reviews = ~ 11% failures.

Comparing Intel 510 to Crucial M4: Intel 510 suffers far less from freezing problems, but Crucial suffers far less from bricked drives.

If you want a reliable drive I suggest SATA II: Samsung 470 or Intel X25-M.

 

I`m not shure we should follow the reliability rate we have calculated Phil. But then again our calculations of X25-M was pretty dead on with what Intel said

 

I'm not exactly sure what you mean... but I always realize that 10% failure on Newegg is not 10% failure in the real world. I assume people with problems are far more likely to leave feedback.

so calculating the 'failure rate' is mostly interesting for comparisons across brands and models.

 

Yes for the purpose of comparing different brands this study is excellent

 

I think so too.

It might be interesting to recount Samsung 470, Intel X25-m and C300 using the separate categories.

I'm not looking forward to the work though

 

I could help, if you'd like.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Yes that would be great. The more people help, the better.

If you want to start now you could take Samsung 470 (not too many reviews).

Count the "serious problems" (as defined in the first post) and categorize them something like this:
Disk not recognized:
Worked fine then bricked:
DOA:
Mac. incompatibility issues:
Unknown issue:

You can create new categories when you deem it necessary.

 

Here you go:


Product Name: Samsung 470 64GB
Total Number of Reviews: 67
Firmware Problems: 12
Bios not recognizing: 1
Mac Incompatibility issues: 2

Product Name: Samsung 470 128GB
Total Number of Reviews: 62
Firmware Issues: 11
VMWare problem: 1

Product Name: Samsung 470 256GB
Total Number of Reviews: 22
Firmware Issues: 8

I know you don't want us to include firmware issues, but it seems to be a very significant problem. If you don't want to include that in your study, that's fine.

Mr. Mysterious

 

We're counting malfunctioning drives, not complaints.

"Updating the firmware is nearly impossible" is a complaint if the drive works fine.

"My system freezes (because of firmware)" should be counted as a failure/ firmware problem.

So no bricked drives for Samsung 470?